Per Klang
External consultant at Institute for Dialectology, Onomastics and Folklore Research, Department of the Swedish language
- Email:
- per.klang[AT-sign]isof.se
- Visiting address:
- Alsnögatan 7, 7 trappor
104 60 STOCKHOLM - Postal address:
- Box 20057
104 60 STOCKHOLM
Short presentation
In Swedish, the past tense usually refers to an event preceding the time of the utterance. However, there are cases that buck the trend by expressing present or sometimes future time reference, for example: (Swe.) "Det var en god burgare", (verbatim tr. to Eng.) "That was a good burger", meaning 'burger-is-good-right-now'. Examples such as these, which I call ''the incongruous past'', happen to be my research topic. It is quite vexing – the uncertainty as to why we use it.
Keywords: semantics pragmatics mirativity genericity tam-features
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